Fifth Among Five

When the Mets completed their series in Texas on Thursday, their record stood at 73-86, despite the current season having little in common with either ’73 or ’86. One night later, in Washington, we definitively find 2026’s companions in other Met seasons.

The Mets have finished alone in last place in…

1962,
1963,
1964,
1965,
1967,
1977,
1978,
1979,
1982,
1983,
1993,
2002,
2003,
and
2026.

Seems like a good idea to put a period on this year. The schedule if not the weather will take care of that in a matter of blinks. Saturday’s game at National Park has been pushed up a few hours to avoid the effects of the nor’easter. We’ll see about Sunday. If the Mets play, they will play for as little as competitively possible. They cannot move up in the division. Had they swept this three-game series, they could have finished next-to-last. Not much of an incentive to begin with.

Friday night, the fifth-place Mets, throwing a bullpen game, looked not quite as good as the fourth-place Nationals. They both looked about equally bad. It came out in the Washington wash as a 7-6 win for the hosts. The Mets — Jonathan Pintaro (3) and Cionel Perez (1), specifically — threw four wild pitches in the third inning. That would seem to disqualify a team from winning a game or finishing ahead of anybody. But they did fight back, in their way. The wind blew in, but not enough to keep Bo Bichette and Carson Benge from hitting a pair out in the fifth inning. Benge’s blast means he’s the first 20/20/20 rookie in Mets history, home runs, doubles, and steals being the stats necessitating those slashes. It’s a swell accomplishment, even if the euphoria a fan feels on the kid’s behalf is a bit muted, given it was clinched in the game that ensured this Metropolitan edition would land in the cellar for good.

It was a nice streak of not finishing last we had, twenty-two consecutive years in which we weren’t the worst team in the NL East. I wouldn’t say 2004 through 2025 represented an epoch of endless success, but we always had somebody to look down on, or, in the case of 2020, across at. That was the year the Mets and Nats each completed their truncated rounds tied for fourth. In 2020, they played a hundred fewer games than the Mets have played this year thus far. This year was as true a test as any that goes the distance. This year we finished behind all comers.

Next year, whenever it arrives, we start tied for first. Next year always promises to cure what ails us at the end of years like this.